Hand-made paper

I spent last week at a papermaking workshop at the Ox-Bow School of Art, the summer school of the Art Institute (open to non-students). I've never made paper before, but I wanted to try out Ox-Bow (it's closer to me than the other places I've gone for week-long workshops), and I was interested in trying out something new, just for the pleasure of it, and figuring there might be connections one way or another with textile work. At a minimum, I figured, I'd come out with some paper that I could use to make cards. That was certainly accomplished, and if it was easier to make paper in my own studio, I'd be tempted to continue with it. The teacher, Andrea Peterson, was excellent. If you're interested to see a couple of short videos of her in her studio, you can watch here (includes a demonstration of painting with pulp directly on the paper) and here (is a tour of her studio, showing the equipment used). The students were also a great group, about 2/3 Art Institute students, and the rest artists working in a variety of media. The facilities at Ox-Bow are very good, and the setting is beautiful. I will definitely keep an eye on their calendar for other possible workshops to do there.

The photo at top shows a few small pieces of cotton paper (about 8" square) that we made the first evening we were there. The piece on the left is plain; the second was scrunched up and then smoothed out, to get some texture; the third had a bamboo placemat pressed into it for texture.

We worked with a range of fibers: cotton, flax, abaca (a banana plant from the Philippines), and kozo (mulberry). This photo shows some cotton undyed and dyed, flax, and abaca.

I did a lot of experimentation with combining fibers, often using a mold that was about 5"x10"; my plan is to fold these in half for cards.

One technique we learned is called "inclusion." You make a sheet of paper, and while it's still wet (before pressing and drying), you can lay things on the paper, then covering them with a very thin, transparent sheet of abaca.  Here I've included (from the left) flower petals from spiderwort, pine needles, and broken up bits of a pine cone. (Click on any image to enlarge.)

close-up of the spiderwort petals

from left: spiderwort pistils, dandelion, unknown flower petals

We were able to dry most of the paper we made in a special dryer, which kept the paper flat, between blotting paper and large sheets of cardboard. What we couldn't fit in the dryer, we air-dried, which results in a crumpled texture:

I also made some big sheets (about 20x30"), all of them creating a swirl with two different fibers. (The blue below is a dyed cotton.)

detail of the large sheets

We worked with colored pulp (colored by mixing in paint) in two different ways.  The first was by coloring the pulp in the main vats, and pulling paper from those vats. This next photo is a combination of rectangles pulled from blue and tan vats, and a looser shape pulled from a red vat. (The red was a larger shape, but I didn't like it, so I put another rectangle of blue over it.) The white below is just a separate piece of paper so you can see the colors, which in person are not washed out like the photo.  I like this one a lot--wish I'd done more of this sort.

about 18x28"

 Most of this next one was done in the same way: making three rectangles of cream and tan, and then laying down other blue shapes that I dripped onto a bamboo-supported screen and then "couched" onto the cream/tan.  The red dots were made in a different way--by "painting" with a much more finely ground pulp, which was then colored. The colored pulp becomes part of the paper itself--rather than being paint applied to the surface. The problem is, it's not easy to apply with a high degree of control. Rather than a brush, implements used are spoons, squeeze bottles, syringes, or just poured from a cup. These circles are OK, but I didn't otherwise have much success with this technique.

In the next piece, the rectangles and large blue areas were couched on, but the red lines were my attempt to draw with a syringe. I was frustrated with my inability to get a steady line, and abandoned "painting" with the color pulps after a couple more failed pieces.  Some students had a lot of success with the technique, but it didn't interest me enough to keep at it.  

When I get around to making cards from some of this paper, one thing I'll try is adding stitching to the paper.  Here are some sample stitches that I did on the back of an ugly painted sheet. Two different kinds of thread, using an embroidery needle.  This worked fine on the cotton paper; I'll try a finer needle on the the abaca and kozo. I'll also try out some stamping on the paper--probably similar to what I've done on commercial paper and on linen fabric.

So, an interesting and fruitful interlude, but now I'm eager to get back to my fabrics. . .

Back in the studio

With prepping my studio for painting, putting it all back together again, and then a two-week trip to France, I was out of the studio for all of March and April. Once I got home, I spent a couple of weeks working on small projects, but then a week ago, I put Jeremy's wedding quilt blocks back up on the design wall, and have been working steadily on it since.  I start each day making a block and building up my supply of smaller units. It feels good to be working on it again, and I now have enough blocks up on the wall that I can get a sense of the overall impact.  I am happy with the direction it is taking.

The quilt will be about 60" wide (the width between the two strips of blue painter's tape on the design wall) and about 90" long (marked by the strip of tape on the heat register at bottom left). Right now I have 29 blocks, all cut to 10.5" high, but with varying widths. The blocks are not yet sewn together. I am thinking about placement as I put finished blocks on the wall, but there will be a good deal of adjustment once all the needed blocks are sewn.

I did complete one small top in early April, at a four-day retreat in Chicago with my friends in Quilters by Design:

42 x 42"

This started as a "travel appliqué" project, made with my hand-dyed fabric, and using the design of quarter-circles that I made in another quilt, described here (interesting to see how different the same design can look with different fabrics). For a year or two, I carried around gray squares with basted circles. When they were done, I cut them in quarters and sewed them back together. I chose colors based on my bedroom--this may end up as a wall-hanging for that room.

And here's an account of the small projects I completed after I got home from France:

First up, I spent time designing and basting a new travel appliqué project. I like to have appliqué to do as handwork with me when I travel, but there are requirements: it has to be relatively small, and it has to be working with complete single shapes, not layering one shape on another. I had such a project with me in France, but it was something I had done before--a repeat of a Japanese crest design. It happened to be a relatively challenging piece (many very narrow pieces), and that, along with the fact that it was something I'd already done, added up to a not very enjoyable project.  When I got home, I actually threw it out, about 1/3 completed. I was highly motivated to have another project lined up before my next trip, whenever that may be.  I decided to something along the lines of this quilt, done about 10 years ago from a purchased pattern:

I decided to go with just rows of applique, no striped borders. I sketched out a design in Photoshop, experimenting with shapes and colors, and figuring out the dimensions

I kept the dimensions as designed, including placement of narrower rows, but did further fiddling with shapes and colors. The shapes are now all basted onto rows of yellow fabric. This way, I can take a couple of rows of fabric with me on a trip. I'll sew the rows together once the appliqué is done. 

will finish at 36 x 42"

Hmm, looking at this photo, I think I may need to un-baste the orange triangles and place them a little further apart.

Next I finished up a small "structured improv" quilt that I started at the quilting retreat, using an improv method that Jill Guffy taught to us.

36 x 42"

Then I finished a round table mat for my sister, to go with some placemats I made for her last year; it just needed trimming and binding.

diameter 29"

And then I spent a few days making a large supply of luggage tags--a fun way to use up small pieces of fabric in my stash. I like to have a supply of these on hand, and I had just given away my last one. Usually I make about 10 at a time, but it always takes me a while to warm up and remember how to make them efficiently, so I figured I would just keep going, and I ended up with close to 4 dozen.

17 different fabrics

44 tags total

And soon after my return, I sandwiched up the half-circle applique project (including dyeing some gray fabric for the backing) and started hand-quilting it. Right now I'm doing a grid of ditch-quilting in the seams, and will likely add additional lines of quilting in two directions in the middle of each small square. Each day after breakfast, I do about 20 minutes of hand-stitching, before going up to the studio. Soon it will be nice enough to do this outside on our back deck--it just has to stop raining. . .

Studio re-painted and re-configured

I was having some interior painting done this spring, and decided to freshen up my studio, last painted about 25 years ago. I changed the color from a peachy-tan to light gray, which came out well. And since I had to move the furniture around anyway for the painter, I took the time to make a scale-model plan of the room, playing with the positioning of the furniture.  I discovered that if I swapped the positions of the sewing table and the cutting table, I gained enough space on the north wall (where the cutting table is in the photo above (green mat on the table) that I could move my fabric storage cabinet (aka filing cabinet) far enough from the wall that I could get in there to actively use the design wall at that end. (It doesn't look like enough space below, but it is.)   

The big change I made was that I expanded the width of the flannel-covered design wall by 16" so that it takes up the full width of the wall. I also improved the design wall by using duct tape to tape together the foam insulation panels, which I'd previously just nailed up side by side. And I covered the whole thing with flannel (and a layer of cotton underneath that) before nailing the wall up, so I have a taut, smooth surface. Much better than my old one, where I had just tacked flannel to the surface of the panels, which meant pretty loose flannel, as you can see towards the bottom of this photo from a couple of years ago.

I also bought a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart to put near the ironing board, a great place to store my spritzer bottles and other odds and ends:

In fact, I got two of them, one for downstairs, to corral my embroidery projects/supplies, so that they're not spread across the dining room table.

Many thanks to David for helping me out with the construction and mounting of the design wall, and for doing all the assembly on the utility carts.  I told him I thought the design wall would take us about an hour, but it took us more like 4 or 5!

Steady progress

I'm making steady progress on the quilt. I'm guessing these are about 1/3 of the blocks that I'll need. I'm in no hurry to finish, and am enjoying the pace of completing a unit every day or two. You can't tell from the photos, but the hand-dyed dark blues are lovely, with a velvety appearance that makes you want to touch the quilt.

One block at a time

I'm thinking of working on no more than one block a day, so that I don't get frustrated with the process of working on these blocks. Even though it may look like random improvisational piecing, I learned when making the first "confetti" quilt that each block is a composition in itself, which then needs to find its spot within a larger composition. It's a challenging process, with a fair amount of ripping and restarts along the way. The block above is what I finished this morning. So now I have these two blocks:

The block on the right is two sections seamed together vertically (just to the right of the turquoise bit). This may or may not stay this way--I hadn't noticed the secondary "lightning" pattern of the lighter blue in the background. Perhaps it will work, perhaps not.  I can see that I need to approach this project with both curiosity and patience.

A wedding quilt for Jeremy

Last fall, I posted about three wedding quilts that I'd completed in the previous months; that post is here. At the end of the post, I wrote this:

All three of the recipients (two brides, one groom) were people who had grown up knowing my son Jeremy, and one of them was an especially good friend.  It was a great delight to be included in these celebrations, each of them thoughtfully put together, permeated with the personality and commitments of each couple. But by the third, all so close together, I couldn't help but feel a deep sadness too, that Jeremy didn't make it to this stage of life. . .  Sitting here thinking about this, it occurs to me that I could still make a wedding quilt for Jeremy, imagining what he might like. I think his favorite color would still be blue.

So, in the last couple of months, I've begun working on a wedding quilt for Jeremy. For readers who don't know, Jeremy died in 2004 at age 18; he would be 33 now.  It's been almost three years since I've worked on a project that is connected to Jeremy (not since my exhibition in 2016); I am glad to once again be working on a project with the strong emotional component of a tie to Jeremy. It keeps him close to me.

Here's the design process so far. I'm thinking of something that would draw on three earlier quilts, "Confetti," which was made a couple of years ago as a wedding present for a friend, "Loss," which was the first quilt in my series about losing Jeremy, made in 2005-08, and "Log Cabin," made in 2004 and intended for Jeremy to bring with him to college.  I'm thinking of using the basic design of "Confetti," but switching the background to a range of deep/dark blues.

Confetti

Back in December, I dyed up a range of blues. I aimed for highly saturated blues. In 2004, Jeremy chose blue as the main color for the log cabin quilt, but after I worked up a couple of sample blocks, he said, "Mom, those aren't blue." Well, right, they were a grayish blue, so I went out and bought more fabric with less gray!  For the wedding quilt, I dyed 25 different blues in all; these ten made the cut:

For the accent colors, I started thinking about the colors I used in the panel of "Loss," which was an abstract portrait of Jeremy.

Loss

Loss, detail

I went through my scrap bins and ironed pieces that seemed good possibilities.

Then I cut out small pieces and laid them on some roughly cut pieces of blue, making a maquette of a block, about 9x12" (this is not sewn):

Then I tried triangles, a dominant shape in the "Loss" panel; I like rectangles better:

Then I tried all solids:

I like the solids.  Then I thought I'd see what all blues looked like:

Very different emotion conveyed, not what I want for a wedding quilt.  Then I looked closely at a favorite remnant from fabrics I used for "Log Cabin":

What if I used ribbon shapes rather than rectangles, and limited the colors as in this fabric?

No, rectangles better:  

But more colors needed--turquoise and gold added in:

But maybe even more colors? I think yes:

How about adding in some black also? Yes:

So, I put away the bins of scraps of print fabrics, snipped rectangles from my hand-dyes, and started sewing (block on right is 10" high):  

Yes, I think this is a good start.

Catch-up post on beading

Back in September, I posted about a beading workshop I'd taken, and my intention to use beads to embellish some hamsas; that post is here.  But then I never showed what I came up with. In the subsequent months, I made three hamsas with beads, two of which have beads as embellishment to stitching, and then one where the decoration is entirely in beads. The first one is finished; the other two are not yet sewn up into final form. I like all of these. I don't know if I'll do one with all beads again--I like how it looks, but it was much more time consuming than the ones that also have embroidery. I also don't find beading as relaxing as embroidery. You can click on any of these to enlarge the image.